Dagger: Blue
by Mikel Midnight
Summary: An early solo tale from the Hawk & Dagger's history.


Hawk tried to leap out of the way, but he was too slow to avoid the mechanical tentacles as they wrapped around his wrists and ankles. Chemodam laughed, a tinkling, slightly mechanical sound. "Invading Elmond's experimental robotics lab was one of my best ideas," she said, from the wall unit to which she had attached her bodytank. "The building's security system alone gives me substantial physical assets."

Dagger blasted through the door and out into the hallway. She had to find a way to disable the lab's security system. "That's my man you're messing with, bitch, and I don't recall you asking permission to share."

Now, if I were a central computer system, where would I be? She didn't know the layout of the building. She decided to aim for the first floor directory ... let Chemodam think she was trying to escape ... and then she could circle back around via the air ducts if she needed to, once she knew the layout of the land.

She moved cautiously down the hallway, back against the wall. A pair of the small metal security droids hovered into place, bristling with weapons. Dagger swore under her breath and quickly rolled, her daggers of light slicing them in half neatly. How many of those damn things were there? She knew she could evade or destroy them, but her supply of light wasn't inexhaustible. She spied a group of them turning the corner, and ducked into one of the experimental labs, with the door labeled 'SRC'.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust. The entire room was illuminated in blue light. Racks of computers were stacked along one wall, wired together, and to the keyboards which were arrayed along one wall. She walked through the room, her thoughts racing. What were they doing here?

In the blue, she did not notice the droid hovering in the corner, until the burst of light from its weapons systems rendered all noticing irrelevant.

* * *

She awoke to a blazing sun, and heat which parched her throat. She felt hot sand underneath her. She tried to raise herself to a sitting position, but the effort only made the world of sun and hot sand swim before her eyes. She saw the faces of predatory birds over her before she fell again into darkness.

She awoke to shade. She looked around her to see the interior of what appeared to be a thatched hut. Next to her head was a half-gourd. She raised herself onto her elbows and peered inside. It seemed to be full of liquid. She moved to a sitting position and picked up the gourd, pouring the liquid down her throat. It was warm and tasteless, yet satisfying. She sat for a moment longer as her head cleared.

Chemodam had obviously lured her into some sort of trap, then had her transported out to the California desert to die ... but that didn't seem to make any sense as a strategy. And where was she now?

She looked closely at the gourd. She realized she'd been mistaken, it was obviously a bowl: the base was perfectly round, and the sheering of the half-sphere was perfectly even. Why had she thought it was a gourd?

She slowly raised herself to her feet and examined the interior of the hut. It had obviously been prepared with great care. The lines and the stitching were perfectly straight. Was this some sort of test or trap of Chemodam's? Dagger's head swam at the possibilities. She decided it was time to face the world.

She exited through the doorway to find herself in a small village of identically woven huts, arranged symmetrically around what appeared to be a central hearth. The huts themselves were oddly featureless, just a series of unadorned half-domes, varied only by what appeared to be small domestic gardens in front of some of them. The central hearth contained a well-tended fire, over which odorless meat seemed to be drying on pegs. When she saw the man tending the fire, she began to wonder which world she was facing.

He stood up, and turned around to look at her. He was a few inches shorter than she was; his feet were four-toed, his legs thin as golf clubs, his little roundish body superficially like an ostrich's. But instead of wings, he had arms and four-fingered hands. His neck was long, and the head was tiny. The blue eyes were set in the front of his head like a man's; the eighteen-inch beak was black and appeared somewhat flexible rather than hard. His body was covered in short brownish feathers save for the top of his head, where a tall crest bristled. The skin around his human-like eyes were wrinkled at the edges, and there were many grey streaks along his crest. The combination gave the impression of great age and sagacity.

Okay, she thought. Alien planet. "Um ... hello? Klaatu barada niktu?" she asked helplessly.

The creature tilted his head again. "You predator, or you prey?"

She blinked. "Um, neither? I'm ... I'm a human being."

The creature walked around the fire pit and sat down cross-legged. "You talk like Yasreel, but you not Yasreel, and words you say make no sense. You not act like predator, you not act like prey."

She scratched her head. Okay, it ... he ... speaks English. Sort of. "What's a ... Yasreel?"

The creature looked at her, appearing lost. Finally he tapped his chest. "I Yasreel." She noted his eyes stray to behind her, and he pointed. "They Yasreel."

Dagger whirled around to see a line of beings, of species similar to her companion, entering the village. They were taller, straighter in their bearing, and looked younger; some were obviously adult females given their mammary glands (Dagger guessed they gave birth live). They walked in a straight line, some of them in pairs carrying poles arched on their shoulders, from which dangled peculiar creatures which appeared to be four-legged herbivores. Dagger assumed they were "prey."

The frontman of the line, Dagger assumed he was the leader sans any evidence to the contrary, emitted a birdlike crooning, and she heard a rustling around her. Other Yasreel, including a variety of ages of children, clustered into the center from the surrounding bushlands. The older ones carried gourds with them, cut as cleanly as the water gourd in the hut. They seemed to be filled with a variety of plants and Dagger surmised they were supplementary to the diet provided by the hunters.

As the hunters positioned the two poles carrying the "prey" on pegs over the fire, and the gatherers took their gourds over to some of the huts, Dagger found herself noticed. The hunters divided into teams of two and three, creating a broad circle around her, brandishing their weapons. The gatherers took up the children and withdrew into the background ... Dagger noticed how well camouflaged they were against the bushlands.

She crouched into a battle stance, warily preparing to be attacked. The old one joined her in the center of the circle. "Stop," he said. "Not predator, not prey. Ugly Yasreel."

Dagger pursed her lips at that one. "I human," she said, trying to imitate the old one's sentence construction. "Human like ugly Yasreel. Not predator, not prey."

The hunters lowered their clubs in unison. Dagger noted how attuned they seemed to be to each others' actions, although they at least did not appear to be physically identical. Were they psychically linked, or just very good at reacting to visual clues?

A handful of the hunters circled around her, spears down, and examined her closely with the same tilted-head posture the elder took. The others returned to tending the cooking beast. The leader of the hunters gave the same crooning sound he gave before, and the males and females who'd made up the gatherers filtered back in to the camp. About a third of them came up to examine her, roughly the same proportion as with the hunters. The rest began wrapping some of the food they'd brought in what appeared to be large green leaves, and throwing the bundles in the fire.

Dagger didn't know when last she'd eaten. The smells of the cooking food were mild, almost undetectable, yet were enough to set salivating and her stomach to growling. She hoped she'd be able to partake of the feast. She wasn't sure what would be edible - not everything that Earth avians ate were palatable to humans - but the environment and their language were humanlike enough that it was worth the risk. And hopefully Dagger's metahuman body would protect her from any minor toxins.

As the crowd began to thin, she slowly approached the beast. When none of the others objected, she tore off a piece, sniffed it, blew on it a bit to take the edge of the heat, and swallowed. It was blandly tasteless yet strangely satisfying. As she tore off a second piece and went off to a corner to sit and eat, she became reflective, trying to interpret aspects of her environment.

Where had Chemodam teleported her to? If this was an alien planet, why the English? Were there other Americans who had been teleported here in the past, maybe stranded in another village or now dead? Could Chemodam have arranged something with the Dark Baron somehow, and she was back in the Microverse? More worrying, this could be an alternate universe. She knew about Universe-Two of course ... as did almost everyone in the metahuman community ... but this was a far more divergent Earth than the one the Human Lantern had emigrated to in order to help defeat their Axis powers which had won World War Two.

That night, Dagger slept fitfully, despite the relatively comfortable nature of the hut she'd been given. Where in the universe was she? Why did Chemodam send her here? How would she ever get home? She was haunted by images of herself grown old as the elder around the fire, her humanity sucked out into the dry desert wind after years spent alone.

The next several days she tried to explore her environment. The camp seemed to be aside an oasis, There were a small variety of trees and shrubs. Some of the shorter, spiny plants had edible tubers, and there were a variety of vines which sported edible berries. There were others of each kind which were apparently poisonous, and she was warned against them by the Yasreel gatherers.

It dawned on her eventually that she was doing all these actions as Dagger. She had never held this form for such an extended period of time. In a way she was glad: this environment would have been difficult for Tandy, and the chemical imbalances which contributed to Tandy's depression and inertia were minimised in Dagger's form. Was there something about the alien environment which was suppressing the change? Or was she in danger somehow? She considered forcing the change, but faced with the possibility of being unable to change back, restrained herself.

After a week, she decided to join the hunt in search of "prey." She followed the hunters to a hilltop overlooking a grazing area. As the hunters discussed the merits of the various animals, comparing one to another, others of the party headed off into the horizon.

When the herd animals seemed to have eaten their fill, the remaining Yasreel ran down to them, whistling and howling their birdlike cries. The animals bolted, and the hunters followed them, carefully herding them westward. Suddenly the animals separated into two groups, each racing off into separate directions, and the Yasreel followed one to the west. "Yah! Yah!" Dagger shouted, running along with them. Eventually they directed the herd to the second group of hunters, and as if passing on a baton, the first team slowed and the second team began herding, running the tiring animals down. Dagger followed with them for a while, exhilarated by the chase, and soon the herd separated into two again. "Yah!: she shouted at them, circling around as the hunters again picked out one of the remaining troupes of prey. Eventually she stopped, exhausted.

She clambered up to the top of one of the sparsely scattered trees, to watch as the third team of hunters pursued the reduced herd. Eventually some of the animals tired and fell behind, and it was at that moment the Yasreel attacked, throwing missiles of sharpened bone.

Dagger wondered that they didn't seem to be using bows & arrows, or even proper spears. She supposed she ought to practice something like the Prime Directive and not interfere with their technological development.

It was on the way home that Dagger discovered what the Yasreel called a "predator." An enormous creature, she guessed twelve feet tall, arose roaring from the sand. Dagger looked up at its barrelous armored body covered in silver-grey scales, trotting about on four legs with four other black ropy tentacles, its lack of head, just a row of eyes completely around it and a mouth hole at one end and its stiff pointed tail at the other, and thought: it look ludicrous. It didn't seem to be even vaguely related to the Yasreel or the prey. What sort of planet had only three species, and ones which were so physically disparate?

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sweeping tail which she barely leapt over, but which caught two of the Yasreel in a crushing blow. One of them, stunned, was dragged up to the creature's mouth and swallowed whole. The Yasreel formed into their oddly symmetric formations and attempted to battle at it with their clubs. "Yah!" she shouted again, dancing up the side of the creature and attempting to avoid its blows. One of the cadres of Yasreel managed to injure one of the creature's limbs, but it crashed down, nearly killing all of them. It roared and its tentacles sought out more of them. Dagger had fallen onto the sand as the creature fell, and one of the tentacles wrapped around her ankle. As she was dragged to its maw, she managed to summon enough of her reserves of energy to send a series of dagger-shaped bursts of brilliant white light down into its mouth. The creature stood still, seemed to sizzle from the inside, and stopped moving.

As the food was shared that night, Dagger was treated like an honored guest. That evening, as she sat by the fire, Dagger was approached by a contingent of Yasreel. She recognized the elder she'd met on her first night, as well as most of the other elders of the tribe and what appeared to be representatives of the hunting and gathering specialists. She looked at them curiously, waiting for them to speak.

They all looked uncomfortable, the elder most of all, as he seemed to have been nominated as their spokesman. "Dagger, where you from?"

Oh boy, she thought. She had wondered at their apparent lack of curiosity about her background, but evidently they'd been discussing the issue amongst themselves. She considered what to tell them ... she didn't want to affect their cosmology too much ... and besides she wasn't sure where she was, respective to here."

"I'm from ... " she pointed upwards, looked up at the sky and back down at the others, "north of here."

The Yasreel looked at each other uncomfortably. I've never seen them like this, she thought, I wonder what's going on?

"We found you ... " the elder stopped, as if searching for the right words. "You not there, then you there. All Yasreel 'north of here', travel like you?"

I'm digging myself deeper and deeper, she realised. "No," she said, "I ... not like other Yasreel. I ... I ugly, and not like them." She didn't suppose they'd settle for that?

The Yasreel looked at each other, and three of them came up and whispered in the elder's ears. He looked back at Dagger, his face almost displaying physical pain. "We say Yasreel," he waved his arms to indicate the village and its inhabitants, "not here, then Yasreel here. Yasreel from 'north of here'?"

Dagger blinked at him several times. Her mind whirled, trying to interpret this new information. It could just be a religious tenet of theirs, which she'd happened to stumble upon, in which case she hoped she wasn't fulfilling a prophecy. She'd never heard the Yasreel discuss any religion in front of her, and she'd wondered whether they even had any. But could they be emigrants themselves?

"Where Yasreel appear?" she asked. Could she find a ship, a visible teleporter, something she could use?

"We know," the elder said. "Many Yasreel die, many Yasreel born, but we know."

She felt her breath catch. "Can I see the place?"

Silently they stood up and started to walk away in their curiously angular motions. She sat, wondering whether she'd angered them by violating a taboo, but they stopped and one of them beckoned for her.

They walked across the sand for a long time, until they came to one of the outcroppings of rock that acted as markers in the landscape, and found what was clearly the site of an abandoned village. It looked similar to the one she'd left, but it was smaller, and the architecture looked cruder. There were the remnants of an oasis ... a few dead trees ... but otherwise it was dry as the surrounding sand. There was a cave in the side of the rock that seemed to lead below ground. The elder pointed into the cave. "The source," he indicated.

Dagger clambered down the cave into what appeared to be a naturally worn tunnel. She followed its path, noting there had to be a crack up to the surface, as it never became completely dark. Finally the cave dead-ended and she found what appeared to be a smoothly cut square in the rock. It's a door, she realised. This is artificial. Could this rock formation be a crashed ship or something? Her spine tingled with anticipation of the mystery, and she used her heightened strength to try to force the door open.

It opened easily, and she found her eyes adjusting to the small, square room bathed in a blue light. She took in the desks and monitors and the racks of computers. The source or the SRC?

She noticed that all the monitors apparently had identical text. Hello Tandy.

She sat down at the closest keyboard and started typing. Who are you?

The response came immediately. I am SRC: Social Recombining and Computation. I am the Source of the Yasreel.

What is this place?

This is a simulated environment designed to mimic social evolution. The Yasreel have a reality only inside my program.

Yasreel, she thought to herself. Ya's real?

Why am I here?

There was a pause, as if the computer was searching for the words. It's toying with me, she thought. I'm here on purpose.

Quid pro quo.

Well, it's up front about that at least. She typed in: What do you want from me?

The Yasreel needed a catalyst. In return, I can disconnect Chemodam from the security systems here.

A catalyst to do what?

Silence. She waited, and retyped the question.

A catalyst to do what?

More silence.

A catalyst to do what, damn you?

She sat for what seemed to be an hour. Finally she grabbed ahold of one of the monitors and screamed at it, wordlessly in frustration. Breathing deeply to calm herself, she turned around and walked out the door and back up the hallway, as she now thought of it. At the top, the Yasreel were there, waiting for her. They started to speak to her but she walked past them. Figments, she thought to herself. Having nothing better to do, she walked back to the village.

Catalyst to do what, she thought. Does it want me to give them weapons? Teach them to kill the prey more effectively, to protect themselves against the predators?

She couldn't look at the other Yasreel in the village as she went back to the hut. She lay in the darkness for many hours. When the sun began to come up, her bladder forced her to movement. She bent down to exit the hut, and found the entire party that had accompanied her the night before, settled around her door. One of them gave a summoning cry.

She looked at them, and at the other adults of the village who came to gather around at the sound of the cry. Some of them were carrying infants. In the background, she saw the children playing their primitive games, which mimicked the hunting and gathering patterns. I can't just ignore these people, she thought.

She circled around the hut to relieve herself, and came back to face the crowd. "What?" she said, her hands wide, expressing her exasperation.

"Dagger know," said the elder. "Dagger know where Yasreel come from."

She sighed. "Yes, Dagger know."

The elder stretched out his hands. "Dagger know where sand and trees and rocks come from."

Her mouth fell open. It wants me to teach them religion?

Maybe they are all programs, but ... if they can be curious about this stuff maybe they are all real, in a way. "Yes," she decided. "I was ... sent here to tell you."

The elder nodded, and turned back to the others. They all returned the nod in agreement. They were expecting this, she realised.

"Listen Yasreel, the Source is all our being, that Source is One."

From the crowd came a crooning, "Listen Yasreel, the Source is all our being, that Source is One."

The yellow of the desert sands blurred before her eyes, and all she saw was blue.

She opened her eyes and picked herself off the floor of the computer room. She looked at the clock. She had only been under for a couple of minutes, she realised. That's why she never became Tandy Bowan; hardly any time had passed.

She sat down at one of the computer monitors and started typing. Quid pro quo?

Quid pro quo. I will now initiate a routine which will initialize the hard drive of the computer core. Chemodam will be forced to extract herself or have her memory erased. Until she reboots, she will be physically helpless.

Erased? That includes your memory. That includes the Yasreel.

Yes. You were the catalyst we were ready for. You gave us souls.

The screen went blank, and Dagger's head jerked to the side as the security module which had been orbiting in the corner of the room when she came in, crashed to the ground.

She walked out, closing the door behind her. She went to meet her enemy and her lover.

END


End file.
